Lectures on Shin Buddhism

This collection of lectures by Takashi Hirose was one of Irene's old books that migrated to our shelf in recent years.  One of the nice things about them is the way they dispense with almost all of the religious aspect of Buddhism.  With a different title, they could almost be passed off as existentialism.  Hirose, it seems, is most concerned with sparking any sort of religious feeling in modern man, and so the lectures center on the simplest sort of reflections on our life.  Who are we?  What are we doing here?  What should we be devoted to?  Given that these are introductory lectures intended for the general public, it's not surprising that Hirose's answers to these questions are neither terribly deep nor very specific.  In fact, the important thing to him is simply asking the question at all.  If that sounds both thoughtful and platitudinously true, then you're having the same reaction I did.  The only thing that will stick with me from the book is the introduction to the life of Gutoku Shinran, the 11th century Japanese monk who defrocked and got married as a demonstration that the Buddha's message applied to laypeople as well as monk's.  This "foolish baldheaded Shinran" went on to found a Pure Land sect that remains the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan.